Ver. 21. δώσω κ.τελ. Το share Christ’s royal power and judicial dignity is a reward proffered in the gospels, but Jesus there (cf. Mark x. 40) disclaimed this prerogative. God's throne is Christ's, as in xxii. I. vuk@v=the moral purity and sensitiveness (cf. 18 and on ii. 7) which succeeds in responding to the divine ap- peal. The schema of God, Christ, and the individual Christian (cf. on ii. 27) is characteristically Johannine (7. John xv. 9 f., xvii. το f., xx. 21), though here as in ver. 20 (contrast John xiv. 23) the es- chatological emphasis makes the paral- lel one of diction rather than of thought.
The scope and warmth of the promises
4
Ill.
θρόνῳ µου, ὡς κἀγὼ ἐνίκησα καὶ ἐκάθισα μετὰ τοῦ πατρός pou
ἐν τῷ θρόνῳ αὐτοῦ.
a > [ή ”. ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις.
(ο Laodicea seem rather out of place in view of the church’s poor religion, but here as elsewhere the prophet is writing as much for the churches in general as for the particular community. He speaks ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις. This consideration, together with the close sequence of thought in 19-21 forbids any attempt to delete 20, 21 as a later editorial addition (Wellhausen) or to regard 20 (21) as an epilogue to the seven letters (Vitringa, Alford, Ramsay) rather than as an in- tegral part of the Laodicean epistle. Such a detachment would be a gratui- tous breach of symmetry. But, while these closing sentences are not a sort of
anticipates the following visions (iv.-v.). To the prophet the real value and signi- ficance of Christ’s life were focussed in his sacrificial death and in the rights and privileges which he secured thereby for those on whose behalf he had suffered and triumphed. This idea, already sug- gested ini. 5, 6, 17, 18, forms the central theme of the next oracle.
The ἐκκλησίαι now pass out of sight till the visions are over. During the latter it is the ἅγιοι who are usually in evidence, until the collective term πόλις is employed in the final vision (cf. iii. 12). John knows nothing of any catholic ἐκκλησία. To him the ἐκκλησίαι are so many local communities who share a common faith and expect a common destiny; they are, as Kattenbusch ob- serves, colonies of heaven, and heaven is their mother-country. Partly owing to O.T. associations, partly perhaps on ac- count of the feeling that an ἐκκλησία (in the popular Greek sense of the term) im- plied a city, John eschews this term. He also ignores the authority of any officials; the religious situation depends upon the prophets, who are in direct touch with God and through whom the Spirit of God controls and guides the saints. Their words are God’s words; they can speak and write with an authority which enables them to say, Thus saith the Spirit. Only, while in the contemporary literature of Chris- tianity the prophetic outlook embraces either the need of organisation in order to meet the case of churches which are scattered over a wide area and exposed
22. ‘O ἔχων οὓς ἀκουσάτω τί τὸ Πνεῦμα λέγει
to the vagaries of unauthorised leaders (Pastoral Epistles and Ignatius), or con- tention among the office-bearers them- selves (a sure sign of the end, Asc. Isa. iii. 20 f.), John’s apocalypse stands severely apart from either interest. ΝΟΤΕ on i. g-iii. 22. We have no data to show whether the seven letters or addresses ever existed in separate form, or whether they were written before or after the rest of the visions. All evi- dence for such hypotheses consists of quasi-reasons or precarious hypotheses based on some a priori theory of the book’s composition. The great proba- bility is that they never had any réle of their own apart from this book, but were written for their present position. As the Roman emperors addressed letters to the Asiatic cities or corporations (the in- scriptions mention at least six to Ephesus, seven to Pergamos, three to Smyrna, etc.), so Jesus, the true Lord of the Asiatic churches, is represented as send- ing communications to them (cf. Deiss- mann’s Licht vom Osten, pp. 274 f.). The dicit or λέγει with which the Im- perial messages open corresponds to the more biblical τάδε λέγει of ii. 1, etc. Each of the apocalyptic communications follows a fairly general scheme, although in the latter four the appeal for attention follows (instead of preceding) the mystic promise, while the imperative repent oc- curs only in the first, third, fifth, and seventh, the other churches receiving praise rather than censure. This arti- ficial or symmetrical arrangement, which may be traced in or read into other details, is as characteristic of the whole apocalypse as is the style which—when the difference of topic is taken into ac- count—cannot be said to exhibit peculi- arities of diction, syntax, or vocabulary sufficient to justify the relegation of the seven letters to a separate source. Even if written by another hand or originally composed as a separate piece, they must have been worked over so thoroughly by the final editor and fitted so aptly into the general scheme of the whole Apoca- lypse (cf. ερ. i. 7 = ακκι. ᾱ απι το α. EY 2= xx, το. πμ. τγ- πα το προ κκ. 4: i. 25 = κα]. το. . ο eerie απ. 5 (= απ. 8, σκ. τη Π το - μα το ανα. τα. il. οτ τμ ο “νο, etc.), that it is πο longer possible to dis-